04 September 2013 5:21 PM

Here comes Hitler again, plus evil dictators in general, appeasement and the rest of the bits and pieces, board, dice, tokens, model ships and planes, and wads of other people’s money that are to be found in that much-loved Westminster and Washington DC board game, ‘How to Start a War’.

I was just wondering, on Sunday morning, how long it would be before Syria’s President Assad would be compared to Adolf Hitler, and the American Secretary of State John Kerry almost immediately obliged by saying Assad had ‘joined the list of Hitler and Hussein’ who had used evil chemical weapons. Alas, all kinds of countries have used these weapons. Many that never used them still made and stockpiled them. If the possession or use of chemical weapons is itself a crime, few major powers are clean. Winston Churchill’s own personal attitude to this matter is interesting, and characteristically robust, but does not fit too well with the ‘Assad as Hitler and Obama as Churchill’ narrative.

It was perhaps a pity that a picture of Mr Kerry, and his spouse, dining with the future Hitler-substitute Bashar Assad (and his spouse, once the subject of an admiring profile in ‘Vogue’, now withdrawn) swiftly emerged from the archives . But what is that greenish fluid they are all about be given to drink?

Perhaps it wasn’t a pity. I myself find the wild mood-swings of the leaders of the ‘West’ , in their attitudes towards foreign despots, very informative. Nicolae Ceausescu’s Order of the Bath springs to mind, not to mention the reunited German state’s belated vendetta against Erich Honecker, whom they had once entertained and met as a diplomatic partner. And of course the very-swiftly-forgotten protests over Deng Xiaoping ‘killing his own people' in Peking’s Tiananmen Square, and the amazing licence granted to Boris Yeltsin to do things (including ‘shelling his own parliament’) which we would never approve of if Vladimir Putin did them. Though perhaps the Egyptian ‘stabilisation government’ or Junta, might get away with it. I see they are now charging Muslim brotherhood figures with murder, and nobody is laughing. As for Robert Mugabe, where does one begin?

These wild mood-swings inform me that their current spasms of outrage are false, and that the reasons they give for their behaviour are not reasons but pretexts, thus encouraging us all to search for the real reason. Does it lie in them, and in their flawed characters - or in some object they privately have, but won’t openly discuss? Perhaps both.

Mr Kerry (whose public speaking style I once unkindly compared to chloroform, after witnessing him alienate and bore a huge theatre full of American Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, Tennessee) also proclaimed that ‘we’ (that is, the Executive of the US government) were ‘not going to lose’ the approaching vote on bombing Syria. This was delivered as a statement rather than a wish. Well, in that case, why hold the vote at all? I do think people should stop trying to influence votes by the stampede method, under which you persuade the more sheeplike voters that, by supporting you, they are just doing what everyone else is doing. Baaaa.

If you actually believe in debate, and people making up their minds on the basis of the arguments, this is surely an outrage. Of course, if you don’t actually believe in unpredictable votes, and cynically regard all this debate stuff as top-dressing for absolute power, then that’s another matter.

But Hitler always comes into this because he is part of a cult, the cult of the good war and the finest hour, one of whose branches is the cult of the nice bomb and the moral bomber.

According to the scriptures of this cult, a wicked dictator called Hitler was overcome by a brave and good democrat called Winston Churchill. Churchill triumphed at Dunkirk, and then fought Hitler to save the Jews from the Holocaust, also liberating Europe at D-Day, so that we all lived happily ever after. A group of people carrying umbrellas, called the ‘appeasers’ and led by a man called ‘Chamberlain’, wickedly opposed Churchill and gave in to Hitler at Munich. If it had not been for them, Hitler would have been seen for what he was, attacked and overthrown long before.

Regular readers of this weblog will know that this version of events contains some nuggets of truth – Hitler was evil and was defeated, Churchill had many noble qualities. Britain, though defeated on land in 1940, was not invaded. But they will also, I think, admit that a) it is far from complete and b) there are probably millions of people in Britain and the USA who believe something very similar to the above, about the events of 1938-45. This, alas, still influences their judgement when their leaders try to get them to go to war.

The most fanatical followers of this cult are, however, not just harmless members of a re-enactment society spending their weekends making ‘Boom!’ and ‘eeeee—ow!’ noises as they play with their Dinky toys and Airfix models in the attic.

They re-enact this myth in the form of actual red war, and are to be found among professional politicians in Britain and America. These initiates periodically choose a new person to take the role of ‘Hitler’. This can be almost anybody, including such minor figures as Manuel Noriega of Panama.

For, in the ritual of the Churchill cultists, the important thing is not who takes the part of Hitler, but who takes the part of Churchill, and who takes the part of Chamberlain.

And the smaller the would-be Churchills get, the smaller the alleged Hitlers get too. Note that, despite its many crimes against the laws of civilisation, the Chinese People’s Republic has never been called upon to play the part of Hitler, nor is it likely to be.

Invariably, the American or British leader calling for war imagines he is Churchill. Invariably, those who oppose the war are classified as appeasers and equated with ‘Chamberlain’. And invariably, the targeted dictator is classified as ‘Hitler’.

The awful truth of the Second World War is that it is much more complicated than that, that it was not fought to rescue the Jews (and largely failed to do so) and that many entirely innocent and harmless people did not experience it or its aftermath as ‘good’; also, that of its two principal victors (neither of whom was Britain, despite Churchill’s role) one, Stalin, was as evil a dictator was one might find in a long day’s search.

Which is why western schoolchildren learn little about the Soviet Army’s part in the defeat of the evil Hitler, or indeed about Churchill’s increasingly subservient, not to say appeasing , relationship with Stalin in the later years of the war. Or why so little is said about how slight Britain’s direct contact with the land forces of Nazi Germany was between 1940 and 1944. Let alone of the complex diplomacy which brought Britain into war with Germany in September 1939.

Let’s discuss some of this. Just before my recent journey to Berlin, I visited my favourite second hand bookshop in search of serendipity, and there found, in stout 1960s Penguin editions priced at three shillings and sixpence, a book I hadn’t read for years (A.J.P. Taylor’s ‘The Origins of the Second World war’ and a book I had never read but felt I should have done ,Len Deighton’s ‘Funeral in Berlin’).What could have been better travel reading, on a journey to Berlin undertaken close to the 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second Great War?

I must say I think Deighton’s best work was done elsewhere, and later. But ‘Funeral in Berlin’. Like ‘The Ipcress File’, is tremendously redolent of the rather ghastly 1960s period of iconoclasm, David Frost, the King’s Road and all the rest of it. The buzzing, headachy urgency of the language, the miasma (as Kingsley Amis called it) of expensive king-sized cigarettes and fashionable whiskies. You can almost hear the narrow lapels creaking and the Soho jazz grating on the ear (as Krushchev put it) like a tram accident. It also makes one think of the brilliant encapsulation of that whole rather horrible era in the opening moments of the Michael Caine film of ‘Ipcress’ . Bad old ways were being cast aside, to be replaced by bad new ways.

Deighton was also years ahead of John le Carre’s ‘A Perfect Spy’ in making the point that spies themselves are more like each other than they are like the people who employ them, and that their mutual understanding (which looks like betrayal to the rest of us) casts doubt on the ideologies whose spearheads they are.

I didn’t myself think it evokes the old East Berlin very much. Reading it in my rented, westernised flat in the Heinrich Heine Strasse (a few hundred yards from a former border crossing), with a fine view of the TV tower and the old Red Rathaus, I felt he’d somehow missed the real feeling of the murky, thrilling city I still remember so well. But there are some unpleasant and disturbing thoughts on how much of the wicked Nazi state, especially its secret service, survived the death of Hitler. And, put in the mouth of a German war veteran, there are some unsettling remarks about how much Britain experienced war, in comparison with either Germany or Russia.

Taylor, on the other hand, wears very well. His writing remains clear, intelligent and perceptive. He invites the reader into a sort of complicity. Look, he says, most people couldn’t bear this much reality, but you and I can. Sit down and listen to this…

His dismissal of the importance of the Hossbach memorandum, supposedly a sinister deep-laid plan for war, actually an inconsequential political ploy, his casual mention of the fact that the Czech president Emil Hacha, was not ‘summoned’ to Berlin in 1939 but sought the meeting himself, and a dozen other myth-cracking torpedoes, all still have the freshness they must have had when his book was published (to howls of rage) in 1961.

I must say I find his argument that Hitler was a wild improviser, and that French and British attitudes towards him, Germany and Eastern Europe were incompetent and often absurd, much more persuasive than the standard narrative. He also offers a better explanation than anyone else of how (through a series of bungles and miscalculations) Britain ended up madly guaranteeing Poland and so giving Colonel Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, the power to start a general European war whenever he chose. He chose September 1939, and much good it did him.

Nobody reading this work would be impressed by the diplomatic skills of politicians, or anxious to offer them any power to start wars. They do not, for the most part, have a clue what they are doing. They claim success if it turns out all right, and are never there when the booby prizes for failure, death and loss are being awarded.

Share this article:

16 October 2011 8:58 AM

Hypocrisy isn’t what it used to be. Once, Christian preachers would thunder about the virtues of marriage and then be discovered canoodling with women who weren’t their wives. Everyone would laugh.

Now, pious politically correct persons seek, by innuendo and hint, nudge and wink, to damage a Cabinet Minister by suggesting that he is a secret homosexual. And nobody laughs at the slimy dishonesty of it all.

Everyone pretends to be very concerned about the ‘Ministerial Code’, and about various boring meetings in hotels which may or may not have been attended by some youth.

They even discover, with feigned horror, that the Ministry of Defence is sometimes approached by people who want to make money by selling weapons. Gosh.

But none of this serious, detailed stuff is the real point of what’s really being said. Everyone knows it. Nobody admits it.

Here’s what is really happening. The modish Left know deep down that the public don’t agree with them about homosexuality. In private, they themselves may not even believe the noble public statements they so often make.

And so, without ever openly admitting what they are up to, they destroyed a Minister they disliked for allegedly doing something they officially approve of.

I am no friend of Liam Fox. I know nothing about his private life and care less. But I think it is a very dirty business that Left-wing newspapers, which claim to believe that homosexuality is no different from heterosexuality, behave in this way.

It’s particularly striking that this came almost immediately after the Prime Minister deliberately teased what is left of the Tory Party by saying he favoured homosexual marriage.

I suspect that Mr Cameron was trying to goad the enfeebled Right wing of his party. If they had reacted, he would have crushed them to show who’s boss.

The Left – and Mr Cameron is of the Left – have done this for many years. Moral conservatives have foolishly lumbered into the trap by objecting. And so they have allowed themselves to be smeared as the cruel persecutors of a gentle minority.

But the events of the past week show clearly that the Left, for all their noisy sanctity on the subject, are far from free of prejudice against homosexuals, and quite ready to use such bigotry when it suits them to do so.

Protecting the wrong flock

How typical of the furry Archbishop of Canterbury that he can stand up against the persecution of Christianity in Africa, but isn’t aware of it here.

We shall see in time if he did any good by sharing tea and scones with the sinister Robert Mugabe.I doubt it.

But his behaviour is typical of a church which has been so obsessed with the Third World for so long that it has forgotten the country of its birth, where legions of bureaucrats – often aided by soppy vicars – are quietly strangling the Christian faith.

My guess is that there will be a thriving Anglican church in Africa several centuries after Canterbury Cathedral has been converted into a mosque, and St Paul’s into a museum.

*********************************************************************

A worrying film of a worrying book, We Need To Talk About Kevin, is about to open in this country.

It concerns the culprit of a school massacre, and – though the fictional killer is on SSRI ‘antidepressant’ medication, as almost all such killers are – neither book nor film grasps the significance of this. They minimise it. What a pity.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the alleged culprit of the latest rampage killing, Scott Dekraai of Seal Beach, California, is said to have been suffering from ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, which in the USA is often ‘treated’ with SSRI pills. He is also said by his ex-wife to be ‘a diagnosed bipolar individual who has problems with his own medication and his reaction to same’.

Eight more people are dead, quite possibly at the hands of someone who had been taking ‘antidepressants’. Isn’t it time the authorities looked into this connection?

********************************************************************* Rock superstars such as ‘Sir’ Paul McCartney are the new aristocracy.

Normal human beings bow and simper in their presence, their path is cleared through life, and their dull, unoriginal thoughts are treated with respect.

They also exude a tremendous smugness, these vegetarian, animal-loving, charity-supporting types who cram their unfortunate children into state schools to prove that a billion pounds hasn’t turned them into conservatives.

But when it comes to basic neighbourly behaviour, they are as yobbish as the over-rated music that made them rich and famous. Council officials had to be called to the McCartney wedding party in London in the small hours of last Monday to get him to turn down the racket.

If he’s so nice, why didn’t it cross his mind that others have jobs to go to and might need to sleep?

********************************************************************

In a prison in ‘liberated’ Libya, Amnesty International inspectors report having seen instruments of torture and having heard ‘whipping and screams’ from a cell.

There is also clear evidence of racial bigotry in the savage treatment of non-Arab Africans. So, if we intervened there to ‘protect civilians’, why aren’t we intervening now?

*****************

Street demonstrations are usually a waste of time at best. But they can also be dangerous or harmful. And I must appeal to any readers I have in Boston in Lincolnshire to stay away from a march against immigration planned to take place there next month. I also appeal to the organisers of the march to call it off. And I’m hoping for sleet, and a strong east wind off the Wash, on that day. Let me explain.

Some weeks ago I described the damage that stupid Government policies have done to Boston, which now has a huge migrant population mainly from Eastern Europe.

I did not blame the migrants, whose enterprise I admire, or those who employed them. I hoped to illustrate the wrongness of our open borders, and of the EU membership that forces us to keep them open. I also wanted to assail the terrible schools, the dim welfare policies and the family breakdown that have left so many British-born young people unemployable.

Some concrete-headed councillor in Boston chose to attack what I had written, and cast doubt on its truth, reasonably angering many Bostonians who knew that what I had said was correct.

But a demonstration in such a place can do no good, and may well cause tension and bring undesirable political chancers to the town. Already, an outfit called ‘Unite Against Fascism’ (what ‘fascism’, by the way?) is planning a counter- demonstration on the same day. Just imagine the stupidities that could lead to.

If there is trouble, it will only damage the cause of those who want common sense to prevail in this country again. Call it off.

Share this article:

23 March 2011 3:57 PM

I'll try to pick up one or two issues in the various discussions we are having here. On the Libyan question, I will briefly point out that my Mail on Sunday column on 20th March seems to me to have been some way closer to the mood of the people of this country than the wretched House of Commons, in which adversarial opposition has ceased and dissent is confined to the marginalised.

This House is now Mr Cameron's Poodle. I thought that,after Gordon Brown's post-Iraq declaration, this country would not again enter a war of choice without Parliamentary approval. Obviously if we were under attack, this would not be possible. But we weren't and aren't, and the circumstances under which we began our violence were foreseeable and had been foreseeable for days.

By the way, can those who write here and say that Gaddafi is a national enemy because of Lockerbie please state what they believe to be the evidence that Gaddafi is connected with this episode, and where it is on record? I have seen none. Those who rightly point out that Gaddafi armed the IRA need to deal with the fact that this country surrendered to the IRA in 1998 and the lawfully constituted authorities now regard it as a partner in government. (So, in my experience, do most people in this country, who regard my condemnation of the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a weird eccentricity) So there's no current casus belli on that score either. If these people are so keen to make war on evil killers, torturers etc then why are they happy that we are at peace with the Provisional IRA, who actually launched a campaign of murder on our soil and tried to assassinate the British Cabinet in their beds in Brighton, along with anyone else from chambermaids to kitchen staff who happened to be in the way at the time?

Yet Mr Cameron used Royal prerogative (which should really be renamed Downing Street prerogative since the Monarch no longer has anything significant to do with it) to unleash colossal violence against a sovereign foreign country on Saturday night.

If the matter was so urgent, then the Commons could have been summoned on Saturday morning, as they were during the Falklands crisis.

The first item on the business of the Commons on Monday should have been a censure of the executive for launching a war without Parliamentary authority. But it wasn't. Instead the chamber was almost unanimously in favour of the action, with a tiny number of MPs either speaking or voting against it - far fewer, by my reckoning, than would have been justified by the feeling in the country as it has so far been measured. And remember, the doubt among the populace existed despite an almost wholly favourable media, especially TV, which has in my view thrown objectivity to the winds during the alleged 'Arab Spring'.

Edward Miliband failed the first major test of his leadership of the Labour Party. Having become leader by being prepared to condemn the Iraq War, he made himself David Cameron's lifelong slave by failing to oppose the Libya adventure. Why do I say this? Because his acquiescence was evidence that he is afraid of the Prime Minister, and no Leader of the Opposition can do his job if this is so. Once he has acted out of fear once, Mr Cameron knows he has him where he wants him, for good. He and his party were afraid of being jeered at for their attempts to normalise relations with Colonel Gaddafi in 2004. I am sure the Tories would have made the same attempts themselves had they been in office then. Michael Howard did oppose the Blair-Gaddafi meeting on 2004. But I can't see what principle he was applying.

The Tory attitude to the surrender to the IRA (for which William Hague actively campaigned when it was subjected to a rushed referendum in Northern Ireland) has always been devoid of morality. And the IRA were for years Gaddafi's principal allies on British soil(and to this day retain weapons and explosives supplied by him, though we pretend this is not so in case it annoys them).

As for the 'Liberal Democrats', the pathos and misery of their position must be increasingly unbearable. If they can't oppose this sort of nonsense, then why do they exist at all? Still more votes lost in May.

Dim Tories, we all know, believe that all military action is patriotic. The drum beats. They rally to the colours, however moronic the cause. My theory is that in this way they comfort themselves for their abject surrenders to the EU and the IRA, real threats to this country, by biffing Arabs instead. Though there were one or two genuine patriots prepared to voice fears. And the best moment in the debate, as several contributors have noted, was when Mr Cameron was asked what we would do if the rebels committed war crimes.

From what we know of this uninspiring rabble, it seems more than possible that they have already done so, and very likely that (if we arm them) they will do so. I continue to be puzzled that we should have invested so much in a force so incoherent, so disorganised and of which we know so little. It is all very like that great novel 'Scoop', in which the actual issues took second place to the story. By the way, given how little we know of the various battles taking place, why is it that the BBC insists on saying that Tripoli's reports of civilian casualties cannot be verified.

Of course they can't, and they may well be propaganda. But so may many other things the Corporation reports as fact.If we're going to be cautious about accepting what we are told, then let's not be selective in our caution.

Anyway, there are bound to be civilian casualties. The power of modern munitions is terrible and their accuracy gravely over-rated by gullible war-junkies in the media. War is Hell. Don't forget it.

Then there's the row about whether we are trying to rub out Colonel Gaddafi himself. General Sir David Richards is obviously appalled by such talk, as well he might be, since it is his men who will end up in the International Court in the Hague if this turns nasty. Mr Cameron's strange shiftiness about this seems to me to be very worrying. My guess is that he realises that as long as Gaddafi lives, Tripoli will keep fighting, and the death of the Colonel (in 'collateral damage') is the only way to put a term to a civil war that could otherwise last for years. But that is now much harder than it would have been. And Mr Cameron certainly doesn't intend to spend his late middle age festering in the Slobodan Milosevic wing of the special prison in the Hague for politicians who misjudge the situation. Mind you,nor did Mr Milosevic intend or expect to end up there.

That deals with most of Mr Swanson's objections. As for his view that 'the fact that democracies cannot fight or overthrow every tyranny existing on the planet, all at once without delay, does not mean that they should not deal with at least the ones that present the most urgent and manageable problems', it needs elaboration.

On what principle of law or morality do we fight or overthrow other governments? The whole doctrine of Just war was developed to deal with this, and its principal difficulty is that War is Hell, and needs very strong justification. People such as Mr Swanson really do need to educate themselves about two aspects of war . One, that innocent people's lives are horribly ruined by war, even war in a good cause; and two, that wars are easy to start and hard to end.

My test is this: If you are so keen to set Libya to rights, establish an International Brigade of like-minded persons, all so truly concerned about that country's fate, and so sure of which side is in the right, that you are prepared to be maimed or rendered limbless and disfigured in that cause, Off you go. Fly to Egypt, slip across the border and offer your services to the heroes of Benghazi.

I won't stop you. But I pay for armed forces to defend me, not to go off on righteous adventures, and soldiers likewise sign up to defend their own country, not mess around with other people's.

My case is that 'democracies' whatever they are, have enough to do at home keeping the weak from being robbed and attacked by the strong. And that war is so wicked that the only real justification for it is to defend yourself against those who would destroy, rob or subjugate you.

And that those who claim to 'care' are usually curiously absent when the guns begin to shoot. George Orwell ( who did actually volunteer for the Spanish Civil War and found when he got there that his own side wasn't as nice as it looked) wrote once, I think, of 'that rare sight, a Jingo with a bullet-hole in him.' I would update it to 'that rare sight. A muscular liberal with a bullet hole in him'.

If you care, go. If you don't go, then I don't believe you care. You just want to feel good about yourself.

This is also the problem for our vegetarian friend. How curious that a person who apparently won't even eat a chicken feels so belligerent that he caricatures my view as follows:

'Dear Mr. Gaddafi,I understand that, following your repeated gunning down of people in the streets of your fair cities, you are planning to move many tanks, fighter planes and troops, into Benghazi and massacre as many of your citizens as you see fit. Go ahead old man. I certainly hope those nasty people in the British Government don't dare to try and stop you. That would make them, in my humble opinion, which is never wrong, look silly.Yours faithfully,Mr. P. Hitchens.'

But as I have explained, I oppose intervention because I doubt my power to act benevolently and effectively, don't imagine that because a TV crew can get there, an army can, fear that intervening in ( and probably prolonging) a civil war I don't understand may well lead to more deaths and more suffering than it will prevent . Also I am by no means sure that the rebels will refrain from atrocities and massacres of their own if the chance comes their way. This person refers to Yugoslavia, and perhaps still believes that the Serbs were the unique villains in that conflict. They weren't. But we simplified the war into that shape, to justify our intervention for different purposes. In this case we have no such purposes, just naivety and vanity.

I am not sure if Mr Cameron thinks this war will make him popular. I certainly suspect that he believes it will enhance other people's opinions of him as a 'statesman' and 'man of action'. But not mine.

On the endless God versus the Atheists subject, I continue to be amused by the writhings and wrigglings of Mr 'Bunker', who is an atheist one minute and an agnostic the next, who has tickled the curiosity of all of us by telling how he was 'forced' to be an atheist, but won't tell us who or what did this awful thing to him, nor how they or it did it, and seems unable to distinguish between belief and knowledge for longer than five minutes at a stretch. And sometimes thinks that 'belief' is a sort of gift that has been denied to him, and which he cannot experience, and sometimes thinks it is an inert object which has nothing to do with the person who holds it.

Better still, through thick and thin, he maintains an extraordinarily high opinion of himself. Well done, Mr Bunker!

But I must go. As I peer nervously out of the window I see a sinister windowless van on the street outside, marked 'Huxley, Darwin and Dawkins, Glue Boilers' and two large men in stocking masks slapping rubber truncheons into their palms. I fear they are going to force me to be an atheist. I shall slip out by the back way.

Oh, and as for Mr 'Mugaffi', this was the figure mentioned in the Commons by that fine old survival, Sir Menzies Campbell. Poor Sir Menzies has lived all his life with a name most people can't pronounce (it is 'Mingus') so we can forgive him for mispronouncing the Libyan dictator's. But his slip of the brain did remind us all that, if you are looking for evil, murderous dictators to bomb, Zimbabwe has one just as foul, placed in office by a simpering British establishment from left to right with barely a voice raised in protest (though his true character was obvious to all who wished to know it) about whom we do two parts of nothing.

And if we don't bomb him, then once again, what is the principle on which we claim to act? And if it isn't a principle, then the action must be judged on its own merits - which are slender.

Share this article:

16 July 2008 2:53 PM

I'm travelling at the moment, so have to be brief. I'll try to answer one or two questions raised by readers. Andrew Gower complains that I am 'soft' on Gordon Brown. Can he give me any instance of this alleged softness? Unlike those who now rip and tear in safety at Mr Brown's defenceless corpse, I attacked him when he was universally praised by many of the people who now attack him. Specifics? (If Mr Gower really desires, I can go through more than ten years of cuttings books to produce the proof) I attacked him for his unhinged and disastrous sale of gold reserves. I attacked him for his stupid assault on Oxford and Cambridge based on his misunderstanding of the Laura Spence case. I attacked him for this theft of pension funds and for his general unreconstructed, wooden-headed belief in high taxation, public spending and state intervention. I did all this so long ago that many of those now criticising me for being 'soft' on him may perhaps have been watching the Tellytubbies at the time, or maybe grappling with their GCSEs. But I can't help that. What I now do is condemn the sheep-like, unreasoning mob attacks on him, because this is not serious grown-up politics and because the purpose of loading Mr Brown with negative charisma is to let David Cameron sidle into office all unexamined. I remain as critical as I always have been of Mr Brown's politics. I have this silly belief that long-term consistency, and attacking people in their pomp when others are fawning on them, are superior to fashionable switches of opinion, and kicking people when they are down.

Jeff Pollitt asks how I square my refusal to care about Zimbabwe with a Christian conscience. Let me cite William Blake's profound and disturbing words ( disturbing, at least, to those who believe in the false religions of politics) :"He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer".

My point is simple. 'Caring' about the woes of foreign countries is usually done in public, so as to look concerned and compassionate, and to make the 'carer' feel good about himself or herself, and allow the 'carer' to let as many people as possible know how 'caring' he or she is. It is generally entirely ineffective, and results in precisely nothing. It is, to a large extent, the modern substitute for real acts of conscience and kindness, private and unnoticed. It is these unselfish acts which, if we all tried to do more of them, would heal many of the wounds of our society.."Insomuch as ye have done it to the least of one of these, ye have done it unto me...." No doubt, we all fail in this. But we'd fail less if we tried harder.

He also asks what I think about the consecration of women as bishops in the Church of England. I have never been much moved by this dispute. But I accept that this may be because I don't know enough about it. What I do know is that many very serious, kind and intelligent Anglican priests and lay-people, who are by no means women-haters, are deeply upset by the ordination of women and even more distressed by the plan to consecrate female bishops.It is a flat lie to portray such people as the equivalents of racial bigots. They are truly afraid that this decision grieves Christ himself. I may not share their fear. But I would be a lout and a boor if I didn't recognise it as genuine.

Under those circumstances, it seems to me that human kindness could find a compromise, just as it did over the ordination of women priests. Vicars who didn't agree with this were put under the authority of like-minded bishops. Woolly, perhaps, but a happy outcome for most. But when a similar compromise was suggested, to allow dissenters in this matter to come under the authority of male Bishops, it was rejected by the reformers. I won't go into the details of why the substitute 'code of practice' didn't do the trick. But I promise you that it didn't.

There's also the fact that I have yet to meet a theologically conservative woman priest, and have only met two who support the use of the 1662 prayer book which I regard as the essential mainstay of Anglican belief. Modern vicars always accuse people like me of making an idol out of the Prayer Book's poetic, sonorous language. There's no doubt that it is a majestic work of literature and that its suppression is an act of cultural vandalism. But the real argument is about the book's serious, uncompromising version of Christianity, which is what underlies the soaring poetry in which it is expressed. Modern religion, filleted of all the hard, dark bits, produces banal prayers and feeble music. Those who support women priests (like the priests themselves) tend to be politically correct radicals , believers in the social gospel and in the Church as a mainly political body, with more or less social democratic opinions. So, i don't oppose them because they are women. But I do oppose them for watering down the faith.

So, while I'm prepared on principle to accept that female bishops should be consecrated, I don't think this is the real issue. The real issue is that radical reformers are joining, or staying within, a church whose principles they don't support, in order to change it into something else. I suspect some of them are so uncharitable and intolerant of opposition that they actively hope to drive others out of a church they love. And, cause by cause and controversy by controversy, they succeed. Those who fight against them are ( as usual) made to look like narrow-minded bigots because they are permanently on the defensive, and are forced to fight over issues that can easily be misrepresented to outsiders.

But when critics say "Why aren't they worried about knife-crime? Why do they fuss about homosexuality and women bishops?" they are missing the point. Church conservatives are worried about knife-crime, and they have the answer to it, which lies in tough, penitential religion and the keeping of promises - to each other and to their children - by adults. They insist on our own absolute responsibility for own actions, and scorn the excuse-making that feeds so much selfish and destructive behaviour. Their opponents espouse a much weaker and less effective version of the faith.

Conservatives in the church have never sought these quarrels, which are always started by the reformers. There are, anyway, plenty of religious bodies that have long been unworried by homosexuality and have ordained women to the ministry. But the radicals chose not to join them, but instead to become politically active in a church they disagreed with. It might be reasonable to wonder why.

I'm a reasonably observant member of the C of E, and I can't recall ever having been asked to vote for a member of the 'General Synod'. Ordinary church members don't have votes in these mainly indirect elections, and if any member of the Synod represents tolerant Broad Church Prayer Book Anglicanism, of the sort many churchgoers support, I haven't seen any sign of it. . But, just as Communist and Trotskyist infiltrators mastered the rules of the Labour Party, and transformed it into something else in the 1980s, radicals seem to have worked their way into the machinery (and especially the theological colleges) of the Church of England, and are now turning it into a different body. If it weren't for its special legal status, and the unalterable nature of the Prayer Book and the 39 articles, the C of E would long ago have gone the way of the Episcopal Church in the USA, which is almost entirely in the hands of theological radicals and political liberals and has vindictively stamped out almost all trace of its own past.

I am most grateful to Gareth Haines for pointing out David Aaronovitch's thoughts on the Tories and Blair, which I had missed. There is a small parallel to this, which plan to reproduce in my forthcoming book, in which Steve Richards of the Independent refers to the belief of Blairites that the 2001 election was a referendum on the continued existence of a 'right-wing' Tory Party.

On the issue of science, and whether it conflicts with theism, I'd just like to ask for reminiscences here. What were you taught in school about evolution by natural selection? I do mean school. Specialist scientists will obviously have had a different experience once they specialised, but something tells me most readers here are not specialist scientists. My memory is that it was taken as a given fact, and so not particularly examined or discussed. I've certainly found the huge complexity of the subject far more interesting than I had thought it was, when I have examined it in adult life. From the way in which some people trumpet evolution as a settled fact, and become livid with rage if it is questioned, while often demonstrating major misunderstandings of it , I suspect that most of us are in the same state. We know it's so, but don't really know why.

Share this article:

09 July 2008 2:26 PM

I thought it was time to sum up some of the arguments that have been running for the past ten days or so, and to respond to as many points as I can.

1. Alone in Belfast

Several people chided me for saying I was the only person who objected to the sell-out to the IRA in Northern Ireland in March 1998. All I can say is that this is how it felt at the time. On the day the deal was done (which just happened to be the most solemn day of the year) I managed to obtain some sketchy information about what was in the agreement. I went to the editor of the paper I was then working for (not this one) and said I wished to write a critical article. To his credit, he said yes - the government's public relations machine was already roaring away in top gear. But I had just 400 words, and about 45 minutes to write them.

Those 400 words were the only ones unequivocally condemning the agreement (I used the words 'total and unmitigated defeat', taken from Winston Churchill's speech attacking the Munich pact) in any Fleet Street newspaper on that Saturday morning. I had expected several other commentators to be on the same side, but none were ( or, if they were, their editors had not let them say so). I went white as I listened to the Radio 4 summary of the papers and realised that I was entirely on my own. Had I missed something? Was this really a genuine peace deal in which justice had been served?

The next day, I managed to unearth ( again alone) the fact that the agreement, supposedly signed by Sinn Fein, had not in fact been signed by anybody. I then got hold of the actual document and read it, which had been impossible on the day it took place, and it was worse even than I had feared. I have yet to meet another mainland journalist who has read it, or knows what is in it.

And all my correspondence on the subject was along the lines of 'Why are you so negative?... people change...why can't you accept that this is a great step forward?...how can you be against peace?...etc etc" . Even the Queen abandoned her alleged impartiality to commend the thing. I rang up Buckingham Palace and suggested this was a breach of the rules. I was told by an effete voice to 'ask a constitutional expert'. I suggested that they were the ones who needed to do that, but also asked if they had a list of approved ones, a jest which (like many of my attempts at humour) went straight past its intended recipient. I've never seen a justification of this blatant breach, then or since.

And this zombified unanimity continued in the following months, during which the Unionist people of Northern Ireland were cajoled, bamboozled and defrauded into voting 'Yes' in a disgraceful unfair referendum (Mr Blair told blatant lies about arms being given up for good, the 'No' side got nothing like equal airtime). Prominent among those campaigning for a 'yes' was my old friend with the surgically-attached shades, Mr Dog Biscuit, and his friends in U2, who took part in a Belfast concert on 19th May 1998, three days before the vote. Did Mr Biscuit and his friends understand what they were doing? Or not? Either way, I think this sort of thing has no place in serious politics.

After the 'yes' vote had been achieved, and the issue was effectively closed, it became more permissible to attack the agreement. I remember one person, now a leading Tory politician, arguing with me for hours about it. He said that if it brought peace it was worthwhile. I said it would not bring peace, and that even if it did it would still be wrong to surrender to terror. He said he couldn't stomach that. But a few months later, he penned a pamphlet condemning the agreement. Too late. The Tory Party supported the capitulation, and its then leader, William Hague, also allowed himself to be used in this bad cause. The truth is that there were many moments in the referendum campaign when it looked as if the agreement would not get the 65% support it needed to stick. If a large chunk of mainland politicians and commentators had opposed it, that could have made the difference.

I am still told that it is wicked of me to oppose 'peace'. This view comes from those who think that Northern Ireland has peace, when in fact it has submission to lawlessness, extortion and racketeering, especially in the poorer districts. The threat of violence is just as evil as the violence itself - in some ways more insidious, as it corrupts those whose job it is to uphold the law. Look at the continuing failure to find and punish the culprits of the Omagh bomb - detonated long after the 'peace' agreement , or the murderers of Robert McCartney. The potential bitterness and resentment is currently assuaged by temporary prosperity, achieved by great mountains of EU money - but that is coming to an end. And then what?

I still say that Direct Rule was surprisingly successful and had come close to eradicating anti-Catholic discrimination. And I still believe that Simon Jenkins was right when he argued for power-sharing at local government level. This would have produced an effective, long-term end to sectarianism. instead, we face a dangerous transfer of sovereignty which is bound to end with Dublin ruling a disgruntled and impoverished Protestant minority.

As for the government's supposed concern about terrorism, I just don't know how it can look itself in the face after Belfast 1998. And the contrast between the failure to find non-existent WMD in Iraq, and the pretence that all-too-solid IRA arms dumps all over Ireland no longer exist is almost comical.

If I wasn't alone back in March 1998, I had no way of knowing it.

***************

2. A light shines on David Cameron

Our Tory tribalist friend Mr "Demetriou" offered an astonishing defence of the BBC, and its courting of the Cameroon Tories. He said "The BBC has been portraying Cameron in a positive light because...there is a positive light upon him. They are reporting the reality. Hague et al (as much as I liked Hague and I was a party member when he was in charge) were not popular. The BBC reflected that. This isn't bias, this is simply reporting the events and the realities."

Can he really believe this? And if he does, what mystic Hegelian faith is this which he expounds? What do the words "there is a positive light upon him" mean? Who shines this light? Is there, in the sky, an all-powerful authority which dispenses this light upon the chosen ones, and leaves the others in the dark? Who appoints it? Even 'Britain's Got Talent' and ' the Apprentice' and 'Strictly Come Dancing' make some attempt to justify their judgements of who is good and who isn't, and we can see who is doing the judging. But in politics, immeasurably more important, the decision is made in secret, by persons who do not wish us to know who they are or how they reach their conclusions( see the FoI item in this week's column).

William Hague ( of whom I have many criticisms) is a far better speaker than David Cameron, and in fact one of the best speech makers and debaters in modern British politics. I defy anyone who has seen them both in action to deny this.

Mr Hague is the only Tory Opposition Leader who was able to deliver an effective response to Gordon Brown's fraudulent budgets - to the point, damaging, witty - and composed at a few minutes' notice. It helped that he has quite a good grasp of political economy, which I don't think Mr Cameron does.

Yet the BBC - having broadcast the Budget speech itself in its entirety - would stop transmitting the Budget debate the moment Hague got up to speak,without even a nod to impartiality. Hague also repeatedly bested the supposedly invincible Mr Blair at Prime Minister's Questions, many times making the Prime Minister look as silly as he actually was. But these exchanges rarely if ever made it on to the major bulletins.They were not treated as a significant shift in the political balance by the political reporters.

In the week when Mr Hague bested the EU fifth column in the Tory Party with an internal referendum, the Murdoch press launched an unwarranted personal attack on him (comparable to today's out-of-control, reason-free frenzy against Gordon Brown) depicting him as a dead parrot in a front-page mock-up in 'The Sun'.

The "positive light" of which Mr "Demetriou" writes does indeed shine. It shines from the BBC . And it shines because Mr Cameron, rather than trying ( as Mr Hague to some extent did) to rally and consolidate a conservative political position, has adopted the policies which the BBC itself approves of. If you want to know how powerful the mediaeval church was in England, then look at the influence which today's BBC has over deciding what is laudable orthodoxy, and what is 'unacceptable' and you will have a clue.

Also, I dispute the assertion by Mr "Demetriou" that Mr Cameron is popular. I think he is still greatly mistrusted by many of his own natural supporters, and not much loved by the middle ground. His only asset is Gordon Brown's descent (much aided by the BBC) into unreasoning anti-popularity. This isn't even properly-earned unpopularity, from which there might be some chance of escape (Some of you will remember how Princess Anne was transformed from despised royal grump into stalwart, serious worker for charity).

It is a sort of negative craze, in which people blame Mr Brown if their train is late, or they drop their coffee on the floor, or their shoelaces snap while they are tying them, or it rains. This isn't politics. It's too fickle and shallow and actually has no direct connection with facts or logic.

It's much more like a soap opera in which a character, previously scripted as reasonably likeable and popular, is suddenly re-written as hateful, scheming and cowardly. Just look at the cartoons in the conservative unpopular newspapers. Every single day Mr Brown is the villain of some contrived visual pun. He has no more control over his fate than a soap actor has, who is being prepared for the day when he will be written out of the series.

*****************************

3.Zimbabwe and world government

One thought that has occurred to me about the Zimbabwe problem. I suppose the earliest example of this sort of long-distance caring is Gladstone's stirring up of the British conscience over the Bulgarian horrors, in which the then Tory government was uninterested. If you want to know how this thing is done by a master of the language, read this excerpt from his 1876 pamphlet on the subject:

"Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbachis, their Kaimakans and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world.!"

And the atrocities were truly appalling by the standards of their time (though eclipsed a thousand times over with those of the 20th century) . But British policy in the Balkans was aimed at keeping Russia out of the Mediterranean, and so shoring up the grisly Ottoman Empire, not because we liked it but because its control of the Bosphorus blocked the way to the Russian navy. So Disraeli was far from keen to intervene. Was Gladstone really concerned about the Bulgarians (who were later rescued by the Russians, who expanded their power in the Balkans - a development which might be said to have led to the First World War and all its horrors), or just anxious to reignite his political career?

And when, eventually, the Ottoman empire did crumble, its fall led to many problems we still live with, including atrocities and massacres. Morality in foreign policy is often counter-productive, and seldom predictable in its effects (see, again, the excellent if profane film 'Charlie Wilson's War').

But what occurs to me about the present-day enthusiasm for intervening in other people's countries is that it mainly serves the purpose of those who think that the nation state is finished, and world government better. First Kosovo ( who now examines that) , - each has it chorus of interveners ( and there is still a lobby for a war on Iran whose consequences are incalculable and almost certainly bound to be very bad) then Iraq, now Zimbabwe.

Egged on especially by the ignorant and overweening Blair creature, in his Chicago speech, world 'statesmen' now take it as read that the lessons of the Thirty Years War can safely be forgotten, presumably because it was a long time ago. Those lessons - which can be summed up in the statement that intervening in other people's countries because you dislike their form of government leads to tragedy and misery - still seem quite valid to me.

*************

4. Some other general remarks

If people wish to disagree with me about, say, nuclear power, it is very helpful if they will say why. I cannot really respond to a general statement that I have got it wrong.

A reader requests a good book on Saudi Arabia. Much of my scant knowledge of this comes from general reading, often of the International Herald Tribune. Alas, I can't direct you to specific articles. You need deep pockets or assets to a first-rate library for several of the available books:. Four, relatively recently reviewed by the Economist, which look interesting but which I have not yet read , are :"Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi oil shock and the World Economy", by Matthew R.Simmons, published by John Wiley.; "The Saudi Enigma : A History, by Pascal Menoret, published by Zed Books; "Saudi Arabia in the Balance" Edited by Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman, published by Hurst; "Saudi Arabia exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis" by John R. Bradley, Published by Palgrave Macmillan.

One reader accuses me of a 'hatred of science'. I am not sure how anyone could ' hate' such a thing as 'science'. Though I do dislike its misuse to close debates that are not in fact resolved. There still seem to be people around with a 19th Century view of 'science' as a great historical and moral force, countering religion and replacing it. Scientists of this era also tended to believe that, by about now, science would have explained everything - a goal it has failed to achieve. Even where it has explained, science has tended to concentrate on answering the question of 'how?' rather than the question of 'why?' which often falls outside its ability to explain.

Like a climber through the foothills of a great mountain range, the genuine scientist finds that each time he reaches what had seemed to be the summit, a new line of unconquered heights appears before him. The idea that science has solved all the great problems is held, in my experience, only by non-scientists. I very much wish my school science teachers had explained that real scientists are filled with doubt and curiosity about things which laymen may regard as settled certainties. I might then have been more interested.

I am informed that, thanks to our reliance on oil, the world is now richer than it has ever been. Well, yes, it is, so proving that wealth is not the solution to all ills. But the question is surely whether this level of wealth is sustainable, and what happens if it is not. I think it useful always to consider that what happens to exist now, and seems normal, was not inevitable, may have been the result of a mistake, and might have been the least good of the alternatives available. This is not so as to attack our forebears, but to ensure that we take the wisest possible decisions ourselves.

My thoughts on town planning were a description of what I have seen over the past four decades. No doubt, planners are beginning to undo some of the damage they have done. I too am unconvinced that pedestrian streets are the real answer, though they have made life bearable in some places where it had become unbearable. But the real problem is that traffic, when it was far less of a problem than it is now and could easily have been dealt with by an investment in public transport far smaller than the one we need now.

This comparatively minor growth was used an excuse to redesign our transport system in a way that generated more traffic, and so on in a process which is now almost unstoppable. The growing conscription of young mothers into wageslavery is also part of this. Sprawling cities with poor public transport and dangerous roads virtually compel these women to drive, since there is no other way in which they can complete the huge daily tasks which our greedy society has loaded on to their shoulders.

I will pick out one contributor for special mention, a Paul Embery, who wrote ""I claim no special knowledge on the subject, only the freedom to doubt what cannot actually be proved..."

Is this the same Peter Hitchens who, just a couple of weeks ago, fulminated against atheists for applying precisely the same principle?"

No, Mr Embery, I emitted no such fulminations. The problem with atheists, especially the new breed of intolerant Christianophobes, is that they assert the certainty of a proposition that cannot be proved. I have always categorically defined my Christian belief as just that, belief. We cannot know. We are (or ought to be ) free to choose.

Share this article:

28 June 2008 8:10 PM

I don't care about Zimbabwe and nor do you. Nor do the Government, the Opposition, the BBC or the rest of the fashionable Establishment currently wailing, with all the insincerity of paid mourners at a Victorian funeral, about how terrible Sir Robert Mugabe is.

Nor do I think Sir Robert’s knighthood should be taken away. I wish he’d use it all the time and roam around Harare in his ceremonial KCB robes.

This award was given to him by a Tory Government long after he had proved himself to be a mass murderer and a despot. So why act all surprised and disapproving now?

It should serve as a permanent reminder of our national willingness to suck up to tyrants and killers when it suits us, especially useful when our leaders go through one of their messianic spasms and start launching do-gooding invasions.

Of course, I’m moved and distressed by the courage and suffering there. But that doesn’t really mean anything. If they set up a recruiting stall for an International Brigade to rescue Zimbabwe, I wouldn’t go, and nor would you.

It’s just a picture show, a distant story over which I have no real power. It’s far easier to get a TV crew into a foreign country than it is to send an armoured division. It’s also far easier to get them out.

And, in any case, it’s not especially selfless or charitable to campaign for someone else to go off and fight a battle you have no plans to join yourself.

To the extent that anyone in Britain gives a tinker’s curse about Zimbabwe, we happily hustled it off to its doom, glad to be rid of the responsibility, nearly 30 years ago.

A British (Tory) Government rewarded the future Sir Robert’s continuing violence, toppled the properly elected democratic black leader Bishop Abel Muzorewa, and forced Marxist despotism on to the country.

In February 1980, the future Sir Robert used brutality and intimidation to ‘win’ an election, in clear breach of the Lancaster House Agreement he had signed. The Thatcher Government pretended not to notice – though this was perhaps the last time we could have acted.

I fail to recall any mass protests about these things, or against Sir Robert’s later Matabeleland massacres. Fashionable opinion, whose attention span makes a gnat’s look deep, had by then moved on to some other cause.

And for those of you too young to remember the Zimbabwe sell-out in 1979, don’t think similar things haven’t happened in your lifetime and with your consent.

In March 1998, everyone in Britain (except me) simpered and applauded when we spat on the rule of law and handed Northern Ireland over to terrorists and protection rackets.

That will come back to haunt us too, just you wait and see.

Just why is the BBC so cosy with Cameron?

I take no sides in the weekly contest between performing louse and performing flea that is called Prime Minister’s Question Time.

And I am pretty hardened to BBC bias, recalling the days when William Hague’s regular Parliamentary disembowelling of Anthony Blair went largely unreported.

But I have seldom heard anything so disgraceful as the BBC report of PMQs that went out on Thursday’s Radio 4 Today programme at about 6.45am. No attempt at impartiality was made.

The commentator, who thought it his duty to dwell at length on Labour’s troubles inside and outside the Commons, helpfully provided the details of David Cameron’s criticisms of Gordon Brown, interspersing them with nearly a minute of Cameron soundbites.

Mr Cameron got four goes before Mr Brown’s voice was even heard, for less than ten seconds. The impression was given that Mr Brown had crashed and burned.

Usually he does. But last week, even commentators who have always been tough on Mr Brown (including the Daily Mail’s excellent Quentin Letts) thought Mr Brown had the better of the exchange. You would never have known that from this account.

The BBC’s response, when I rang to point this out, was so laughably, pitifully irrelevant that I can’t be bothered to reproduce it. More interestingly, the day after I rang them up, the recording of the item had disappeared from the internet.

I hope it’s back by now. If it is, please listen, and ask yourself the crucial question: Why is the anti-British BBC now the Tories’ best friend?

Silent witness – a shameful surrender to the bad guys

In a country with proper justice, nobody would dare intimidate a witness. In such a country, wrongdoers are afraid of the law. They’d know that such a crime would certainly be prosecuted and that they’d end up doing at least 15 years breaking rocks.

But in modern ‘enlightened’ Britain, bad people are not afraid of anything. It’s the good who are afraid. The police are afraid, too, which explains why they pursue the obedient, gentle middle class rather than go after the real crooks and low-lifes.

This is, actually, anarchy. The only thing that makes it bearable is that, so far, the bad people have yet to grasp just how totally free they are to attack, rob, intimidate and terrorise the rest of us.

Even they can’t believe our criminal justice system is as feeble as it is. But the realisation is dawning, fast. Just listen to the laughter if you try to stop someone misbehaving and threaten to call the police.

Bad people know the police almost certainly won’t come, because they’re all busy at a diversity seminar. They know that, if they do, they probably won’t do anything. It is far harder for a young lout to be locked up than it is to get into university.

Worse, they know that the police are now neutral between the respectable and the disorderly – as they showed yet again when they arrested Frank McCourt for ‘kidnapping’ when he tried to defend his own home.It is revolting almost beyond belief that the two major parties – who have together destroyed the British justice system and turned the police into enfeebled social workers – should be agreed that the best solution is to allow witnesses to give evidence anonymously.

This is an affront to justice and a shameful surrender to disorder. Worse will come.

* Can we please have some serious impartial research into the effects of sex education on those who receive it? Its supporters claim that it prevents disease and unwanted pregnancy. Yet the more sex education there is, the more of these things we seem to have.

If it is doing harm, then it is time it was stopped. If things would be even worse without it, then people like me should stop opposing it. One or the other. So we need to know.

* Do not forget. Brave men continue to die almost daily in Afghanistan, on behalf of politicians who cannot even explain why they are there. Bring them home now.

And make Anthony Blair pay, out of lecture fees and book profits, for the care of the bereaved and the maimed.

Share this article:

18 March 2008 6:07 PM

It is truly said that, if you wait long enough, you see everything. And I think we shall, sooner or later, see Western governments talking more or less directly to the political front-men of Islamist terror.

In many ways, they already do so indirectly. How else can you describe the Anthony Zinni and Colin Powell missions to Yasser Arafat immediately after the 11th September massacres, which were greeted with joy by many Palestinian Arabs? Or The White House's decision to endorse the idea of a 'Palestinian State', which it had previously rejected?

They knew, though it is invariably officially denied, that the 11th September was mainly about ending US support for Israel, despite all the official flannel about how it is all about the alleged fact that Islamists 'hate our way of life' and will not rest until they have extirpated it.

It's also perfectly obvious that British commanders have talked to the Taliban in Afghanistan, though of course we officially pretend that the tribal leaders we meet in Helmand are not the Taliban.

And it's undeniable that the Americans have talked to, and bribed, many of their opponents in Iraq, some of whom trade under the brand, or perhaps it is a franchise, loosely known as 'Al Qaeda' .

But direct, explicit contact is still viewed with a gasp of maidenly horror and an urgent rustle of gathered official petticoats.

After all, if we are prepared to bargain with these people, ever, then how can we justify all the panicky palaver of the 'War on Terror', the prison camps, the waterboarding, the 'security measures', the airport striptease comedy imposed on innocent passengers?

And how will the rhetoric about "evil" , and "you can run but you can't hide" look, when that handshake finally happens? Very silly, that is how it will look. In fact, it's how it looks to me now.

Now Jonathan Powell, Anthony Blair's former henchman, has confirmed my suspicions with some astonishing remarks made to the 'Guardian' published last Saturday.

He began by saying : "There's nothing to say to al-Qaeda and they've got nothing to say to us at the moment, but....." (and this is one of those great big, enormous "buts" which warn of a real shocker on the way) "...but at some stage you're going to have to come to a political solution as well as a security solution.

"And that means you need the ability to talk.

"If I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban and I would want to find a channel to al-Qaeda."

Mr Powell's suggestion was, of course, dismissed by the Foreign Office. A spokesman there told The Guardian: "It is inconceivable that Her Majesty's government would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with a terrorist organisation like al-Qaeda."

I remember a much younger Jonathan Powell as a diplomat at the British Embassy in Washington DC, in the days when it was "inconceivable" that we would negotiate directly with the Provisional IRA and buy 'peace' at the price of national surrender and the mass release of hundreds of terrorist criminals.

In those days, the Washington Embassy was just beginning to grasp that Bill Clinton had decided to grind Britain's face in the mud, in pursuit of Irish American votes and to pay a large political debt.

This amazing moment in the non-existent 'special relationship' is described by that superb journalist, Conor O' Clery of the Irish Times, in his book 'The Greening of the White House', a neglected classic on real politics.

Clinton had made big promises in return for the backing of rich, respectable Irish America. He had also needed Roman Catholic working class votes - lost to the Republicans in the Reagan era, mainly over the issue of abortion. This was a way of getting quite a lot of them back.

He had pocketed the money and the votes, but he had forgotten the promises. But Irish America had not, and in early 1994 they came to collect.

Clinton knew he would need them again, if he wanted to be sure of re-election in 1996. So he listened, attentively, to what they had to say. The Cold War was over. Britain was suddenly far less important as a European ally. Clinton preferred Germany anyway.

And so the long saga began, of the granting of visas to Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, and of the political laundering of the Provisional IRA into a respectable 'partner in the peace process'.

And the pressure, ever-growing, from the US on Britain, to give in - a procedure in which we were treated, and regarded, much as if we were some slum state like Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia.

In fact, I remember a senior official of the Clinton White House, in a shocking phone call, pretty much comparing their intervention in Ulster with their intervention in Yugoslavia.

When I pointed out that we were a long-standing major ally and a free, sovereign, nation ruled according to law, she (sort of) realised what she had said. But she didn't withdraw it.

At that time, Jonathan Powell was as macho as could be on the subject of the IRA. He and the rest of Britain's envoys to Washington simply couldn't conceive how completely they had been kippered by Clinton - and by Adams.

The tiny Irish Embassy was far better (and earlier) informed about Clinton's plans and policies than our vast and grandiose mission on Massachusetts Avenue, which was repeatedly taken by surprise, and had to swallow its protests when it realised they would be useless.

A wonderfully futile and ill-tempered meeting between Bill Clinton and John Major took place during this sour period. I am sure pictures still exist of the wretched Mr Major going through the motions of being Bill's best friend.

I seem to remember the high point was a visit to Pittsburgh, to explore some rather tenuous Major ancestral connections. At least there wasn't a military band in fancy dress and a 21-gun salute on the White House lawn, the usual fate of unwanted and insignificant foreign leaders in Washington.

Perhaps this experience of total national humiliation and duplicity may have something to do with Mr Powell's interesting burst of candour.

Even back in 1992, Britain had been using back-channels to the IRA, opened as long as 20 years before with the famous failed meeting between the IRA leadership and William Whitelaw, in Paul Channon's Chelsea flat, on 7th July 1972 (and what were British ministers saying about the IRA on the record then, do you think?) .

The defeatist heart of the establishment had concluded years before (some as far back as 1920) that Northern Ireland would eventually be handed over to Dublin rule, if only the annoying Protestants could be somehow squared or bypassed.

Now, it's my view, and has been all the way through, that talking to Sinn Fein was a disgrace and a disaster. This is nothing to do with any views I might have about Irish nationalism. Sinn Fein was not, and is not, the only Irish patriotic tradition. On the contrary.

There were far better people with whom we might have reached a civilised arrangement, and so marginalised the IRA. But by going over the heads of law-abiding men, we effectively destroyed lawful, peaceful nationalism in Northern Ireland, and let the decent people of the SDLP know that their responsible behaviour was of no interest to us.

Violence, murder and terror were to be rewarded. Civilised behaviour was to be punished.

A similar message was sent to fair-minded, non-violent Ulster Protestants.

I have always thought it particularly foul that the grisly, Uriah Heeps and bloodstained gargoyles of the 'Loyalist' murder gangs were also rewarded for their savagery - whereas that very decent, constitutional and non-sectarian Unionist Bob McCartney was treated as a pariah.

I still remember the late Marjorie Mowlam - a Minister of the Crown - visiting 'Loyalist' gangsters in jail, to appease them, a horrible national shame.

Those of you who are preparing to write in accusing me of being an Orange order loyalist and hater of Roman Catholics, and perhaps a former Auxiliary or Black and Tan should please note the words above.

It is terrorism I oppose and despise, whoever does it. I do not think Britain has a good record in Ireland (oddly enough except during the period of direct rule, when most anti-Catholic discrimination was ended) and I do not think the Stormont Parliament should ever have been created.

The problem in Ireland has been for many years how to give a fair deal to both Roman Catholic and Protestant Irishmen.

Ever since then, official London has had to engage in a huge public lie, pretending that the continuing barbarities of the IRA were the work of 'dissidents' or of a fictional body called the 'Real IRA' - which, if it exists, is the first dissenting Irish Republican faction which has not been violently attacked by its supposed rivals (see the Collins -De Valera civil war, and the murderous conflict between the Provisionals and the INLA).

The result was that Unionism pretty much devoured itself.

David Trimble, compelled to endorse an agreement that must have sickened him, was popular until the reality of the surrender sank in, and the falsity of Mr Blair's unforgivable promises about violence and prisoner releases became clear.

People didn't read the actual 1998 agreement (I did) and so were shocked when it turned out that the IRA and Sinn Fein hadn't even signed it, were committed to nothing, but received huge and continuing concessions enforced by an implicit threat of a return to bombing.

Then Ian Paisley pretended (as we now know) to oppose the deal, but ended up sitting down with Martin McGuinness - and has himself been destroyed by this. He could not possibly be what he said he was, and behave in this way.

Next will come the realisation that Unionism is a dead cause, and cannot be saved, and the emigration to England or Scotland of those Protestants who can go.

All that is left for Unionism to do is to negotiate some sort of special status in the united Ireland that I expect to come about in 2016. Then the Unionists can be a minority and get EU grants to help them stage picturesque and meaningless Orange parades, advertised as an attraction by the all-Irish tourist board.

Why 2016? First because it will be the centenary of the Easter Rising, the great symbolic sacrifice of Irish Republicanism, deeply unpopular among most Irish people at the time, but transformed by the British over-reaction and the foolish executions of its leaders into a scene of national martyrdom.

Second, because by then the demographics will probably favour a vote for unification, and the formerly pro-Union Roman Catholics of Northern Ireland will have realised that their future now lies in a unified Republic.

Third, because such a vote was the ultimate purpose of the Belfast Agreement, though most of the coverage at the time failed even to mention the provision. It can,. by the way, be held every seven years until it comes up with the right answer (i.e. 'yes' to unification).

After which Northern Ireland is automatically transferred to Dublin rule, and the vote can never be held again. I am amazed that these rigged, prejudiced one-way plebiscites are thought to be a fair way of resolving anything.

I do not think this will be a specially happy outcome, not least because it will greatly strengthen Sinn Fein. SF is already the only UK political party allowed by law to raise funds abroad, a privilege it uses energetically and will make sure it keeps in any united Ireland.

It is therefore rich. It is also menacing, and after reunification it will have tremendous prestige. We can only guess at what this might lead to.

Those who are responsible for this mess, Mr Blair and Mr Powell among them, always had very little right to proclaim themselves as doughty foes of 'terror'.

It always amazed me that Mr Blair could claim with a straight face to be so militant on the subject, but in his case I suspect it was because he genuinely didn't see the connection, and probably still doesn't. Jeffrey Archer is not the only British politician with, er, a fertile imagination.

But the connection is there, and it is a very old one. Ancient readers of this site will remember a character called "Never Say Never Hopkinson", a Tory minister for the colonies in the 1950s, who declared that Britain would "never" give independence to Cyprus.

Alas, this turned out not to be the case, and he became Lord Colyton, perhaps to stop people calling him "Never Say Never Hopkinson" any more. People often make the mistake of seeing this period of imperial scuttle as part of the same process that led to our retreat in Ireland.

But in those days, Britain still struggled to cope with the fact that the loss of Singapore in 1942 meant that it would lose its whole empire in a surprisingly short time.

It was hard for Tory ministers (or even Labour ones) to admit that the whole boiling lot would have to be handed over, as quickly as possible, because we no longer had the money or the military power to keep them.

No real principle was involved, just an attempt to save face, ending in the final squalid scuttle from Zimbabwe in 1979, pretending busily that Robert Mugabe was a nice chap and a good egg.

The conflict over Ireland was an entirely different thing, deeply connected with the EU's takeover of the European continent and its need to divide and subdue the power that had for centuries prevented the continent falling under a single ruler.

Politically, it is part of the same process as the takeover of our laws by a foreign authority and a foreign court, our stealthy partition into regions and devolved 'nations' in Scotland and Wales (which will be vassals of Brussels, far less independent than they were before,when this is over).

It was also a very definitely a matter of principle, of not giving in to armed, criminal blackmail. So it is not surprising that both Labour and Tory parties enthusiastically supported this cave-in, and portrayed it as a wonder and a triumph.

And the question of supporting Israel's continued existence was, and is, a matter of the Western world's willingness to stand up for itself and - again - not to give in to armed blackmail.

Well, those who talk loudest of how they are resisting 'appeasement' and of 'wars against terror' and of 'standing firm' and even of 'Islamo-Fascism' are also those who claim, absurdly, that George W.Bush's concessions, and attempts at talks with Arafat, and his 'road map' , had nothing to with the 11th September massacre.

They would have done much more to force Israel into concessions, if it had not been for the cunning of Ariel Sharon, who quickly declared that Israel's 'war on terror' was identical to America's.

If the war in Iraq had been the triumph they hoped for, one of its results would have been a peace conference (similar to the one in Madrid after the first Gulf War) at which Israel would have been hustled to the table and compelled to make yet more lasting and real territorial concessions, in return for yet more temporary, unreliable paper concessions and promises.

In which case it would be a good deal more obvious what was going on. But wait around. It will become clearer, especially when the memoirs start to come out.

Share this article:

20 March 2007 4:10 PM

Do I care about Zimbabwe? Should you? Every few months, the British media, together with a certain number of politicians, make a fuss about the misery now afflicting that sad country. They sympathise with its ill-fed, oppressed people and with the leaders of its opposition movements. Pictures and reports are published of the horrible beatings given to those who dare to oppose the country's tyrant, Robert Mugabe. The BBC makes a great to-do about how it is banned from Zimbabwe but still manages to get information out.

Nobody can read these accounts without a feeling of outrage and a desire to do or say something. But in my view this is in fact a selfish impulse, unless you are prepared to act personally in some way that will improve matters. We become inflamed with righteous anger about these things, only to prove to ourselves that we are nice, civilised people. In truth, we have absolutely no intention of doing anything about it.

And if we did, it would probably fail. I don't know how many of those who call for intervention in Zimbabwe could find it on a map, but the fact that the country has no coastline could present a small problem to anyone who wanted to invade it. In any case, this is all futile stuff.

The disastrous and irreparable defeat of British arms by the Japanese in Singapore in 1942 finished the British empire for all time, though it would take a little while for this truth to become obvious. India went first, and, after a pause ended by the Suez fiasco, the rest followed soon afterwards. Not only could we not afford the empire any more. Our reputation for invincibility had been smashed by Japan, and we had lost the psychological advantage we had gained in the 18th century and had reinforced by our merciless crushing of the Indian mutiny in 1857.

All over Asia, the Japanese had been careful to see that captured British officers and soldiers were visible to their former colonial subjects, reduced to the status of humiliated, suppliant slaves. The effects of this were enormous and permanent in Asia, and word spread to Africa quite quickly.

Britain, which during the war against Hitler was understandably paying less attention to the Empire than it would otherwise have done, was slow to realise how much things had changed. But by the end of the 1950s, its leaders decided it could not afford an African colonial empire.

Its influence in the area has been in decline ever since, replaced by the USA, China, Cuba and - to a surprisingly small extent - Russia. The problem with Zimbabwe, formerly Southern Rhodesia, was that it was already semi-independent and self-governing in any case, with a white minority that did not wish to lose its privileged way of life because of Britain's decline. It was very difficult for a British government, trying to soothe the feelings of the United Nations and to scrub away all traces of unfashionable colonial supremacy, to force the Southern Rhodesians into giving up their power. They had good reason to suspect that, when they did, they would swiftly lose their pampered way of life.

So London devoted much of the late 1960s and all the 1970s to trying to force a settlement there that would enable the British government to avoid all future responsibility and appear in tune with modern thinking. This ended in 1979, under the Thatcher government but endorsed by the whole British establishment, with the Lancaster House agreement.

This handed Zimbabwe to the sinister Robert Mugabe - mainly because he was too politically and militarily strong to be denied. There were better men available, but they were not strong enough, and the rigged elections which followed confirmed the Lancaster House settlement

The history of that process is long, complicated and not specially honourable on any side. It involves, as so often, the curious paradox that the campaigners for 'freedom' turned out to be tyrants themselves once they had power, and that life under the 'colonial oppressors' was in many ways more prosperous and peaceful than it was to become later. You do not have to be a sympathiser of Ian Smith, the leader of the Rhodesian Front and the chief opponent of majority rule, to recognise that Robert Mugabe has done terrible damage to the country and its people. You do not have to be a partisan of Robert Mugabe to recognise that Smith's Southern Rhodesia was a state based on racial discrimination, that could not survive and should not have survived as it was. Was this unavoidable? Possibly.

Intelligent British politicians and diplomats knew, or at least suspected back in the 1950s and 1960s that the end of empire might well mean severe suffering for the people involved. Most of them probably privately admitted that - as in India in 1947 - this country simply no longer had the strength to rule, and that it must make the best of a very bad bargain by trying to leave behind as much democracy, law and freedom, and as strong an economy, as it could manage.

Many of the British colonial administrators, in Africa and Asia, were genuinely devoted men who had worked very hard to bring incorruptible justice, education and prosperity. Such men did all that they could to leave good things behind - and I am always greatly moved by two legacies that seem to have lasted specially well.

Even where elections are rigged and parliaments fail, and civil servants are corrupt, it is amazing how often African judges defy the new tyrants of Africa, releasing political prisoners and halting torture. And it is equally amazing how often African journalists continue to print the truth, despite the very real danger of torture and death, or the smashing of their presses. Free speech and law, interestingly enough, may be more important and enduring than democracy in securing justice and liberty.

What practical conclusions can we draw from this? First, that our power in these parts of the world is gone for good, and it is just posturing to imagine that a protest in London will make any difference there. Comrade Mugabe's response that his critics could 'go hang' is rude and brusque, but also an accurate estimate of how things stand. He doesn't care what we think, and what's more he doesn't even pretend to care.

That's embarrassing of him. We would much prefer an expression of concern, some sign that we matter, even if don't. In fact, his taunting of us for our powerlessness may be his greatest offence against those interventionist liberals who like to imagine that a tough leading article in the Guardian will make Harare tremble.

Second, that the worst crimes of empires often come at the finish of them. Having persuaded people to rely on our power and our ability to protect them, we abruptly change our minds and disappear over the horizon, leaving them with a parliament building, a flag, an anthem, several unresolved territorial disputes and (quite often) a Mugabe figure who, if not very pleasant, is at least strong enough to take over the state.

This is, so far as I have been able to work out, the most powerful argument against empire - which in its British form was often highly benevolent so long as it existed. It has to end, and when it does, there is almost always tragedy. People often say, without thinking, that the winding up of the British empire was a civilised and creditable episode. I completely disagree. the scuttle from India, 60 years ago this year, and the smaller but more poisonous scuttle from Palestine soon afterwards, are among the most shameful episodes in British history. Our departure from Africa was not much better. The USA, and its ring of loyal client states in the former Soviet Union, from the Caucasus to the Baltic, should beware of a comparable bout of shameful departures, probably in the next 30 years, when Washington loses interest in this part of the world and Moscow reasserts its ancient dominance.

Third, that other countries do not exist to provide broad open spaces in which we can exercise our constipated, under-used consciences. It is incredibly easy, and rather enjoyable, to rail against tyrants and injustice a long way away. The tyrants cannot get at you, and if you travel to these places on a Western passport, the worst you are likely to face is expulsion. But it is so much harder, and less glamorous, to challenge the power-grabbers and would-tyrants, and petty but persistent injustices, in your own home country - where your targets can take revenge.

Fourth, that intervention cannot permanently alter the balance of power in foreign lands. Unless you are prepared to stay forever, the 'improvements' you achieve will not survive your departure by more than a few years. Worse, people who trusted you and relied on you will be left to dreadful fates.

Caring about a foreign injustice is futile unless you have the means to express your concern through effective, sustained action. It is an impulse designed to make the carer feel good to himself, and look good in the eyes of others, rather than to do good. So the honest answer, for most of us, is that we do not really care. But who dares say so? To say in a public place that you do not think Britain should intervene in Zimbabwe is to court shocked disapproval. Yet those who say they think we should intervene are applauded - even if they have no intention of doing anything.